Mag 7 Laggard Meta Has Quietly Turned Positive for 2026. What Comes Next.

The Magnificent 7 stocks are having a tough ride in 2026, and only Apple (AAPL) is outperforming the Nasdaq 100 Index ($IUXX). Digging deeper, Nvidia (NVDA) is the only other constituent that is up in double digits. Despite its recent rally, Tesla (TSLA) is still down over 18% year-to-date (YTD) and is the worst-performing Mag 7 stock.

The price action is not difficult to explain. Investors are now getting increasingly wary of tech companies' ever-rising capex to build artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Apple was an outlier in the AI buildout race and is now sitting pretty as investors realize that waiting it out wasn't exactly a bad move on the iPhone maker's part.

Magnificent 7 Stocks Are Underperforming Nasdaq 100 in 2026

Nvidia's price action can be puzzling, though. The company is the ultimate beneficiary of AI capex, as much of the spending is landing in its coffers given how central its chips are to the AI ecosystem. It continues to grow at a breathtaking pace despite the ever-rising base, and guidance for the current quarter calls for revenues above $100 billion, a first for the company. The Jensen Huang-led company has been trying to allay fears of an imminent slowdown and guided for a 70% increase in the next fiscal year's revenues, with the management noting that sales would double if not for supply constraints. In an era where companies struggle to even guide for the next quarter, Nvidia went out of its way and provided guidance for the next fiscal year, which was a first in its history.

Nvidia Stock Has Been Subdued Despite Stellar Financial Performance

However, as I noted in my previous article, rising competition from other chip companies, hyperscalers aggressively building custom silicon, and Nvidia's financing deal spree (circular deals, I would say, a categorization Huang has been dismissive of) have put a lid on NVDA stock this year. Otherwise, a stock trading at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple of under 24x and delivering such stellar topline and bottomline growth would have been a screaming buy.